Video: UFC heavyweight Pat Barry giving out love, but also knockouts

It’s probably a toss-up for what was more memorable on Saturday night – Pat Barry’s knockout win, or his post-fight victory speech.

Barry (8-5 MMA, 5-5 UFC) knocked out Shane Del Rosario (11-2 MMA, 0-2 UFC) 26 seconds into the second round at the TUF 16 Finale in Las Vegas. The win got him a $40,000 “Knockout of the Night” bonus.

But the emotion came out in his post-fight interview with Joe Rogan, and it had little to do with his win. The tragic mass school shooting in Connecticut the day before had been on his mind, the way it had been on the mind of just about anyone with a soul who had heard about it.

And his first instinct was to bail.

“When I got the text message and then looked it up and found out what was going on, I just wanted to go home,” Barry told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). “I just wanted to leave. I wanted to go home and hug my lady and call everybody and tell them I miss them and I love them and I’ll do better to keep in touch. It’s hard to comprehend (what happened in Connecticut).”

Barry said the tragedy, which has gripped people around the world, reminded him that life can be short, fragile and unpredictable, and despite the stigma of MMA fighters being “monsters” – especially heavyweights – reality came through when he was talking to Rogan.

He reminded fans at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino and watching on FX of the same.

“We’re humans and I know we’re supposed to be big barbaric monsters that walk around and punch things,” Barry said. “But we’re just like everybody else and we just happen to have an odd job.”

Barry’s odd job on Saturday got him a much-needed victory that has him in the win column in two of his past three fights instead of losses in four of his past five.

In the first round, though, getting that win was in some serious doubt. When del Rosario took Barry to the ground and managed to work to take his back, Barry, a kickboxer by trade, was in trouble.

“When we hit the ground, and I’m talking about I’m in a live UFC fight with a monster on my back, I could hear people in the crowd going, ‘Ahhh, well, it’s over. So much for that one.’ The one-trick pony, there he goes,” he said.

But Barry survived the round, and the second was a much different story when he landed a left hand that had del Rosario dazed, then a series of big shots that put him out.

The knockout came as little surprise to those who know Barry’s background. He’s gone to a decision just once – a win over Joey Beltran.

But it’s his improvement on the ground that he thinks maybe people should take a little notice of.

“It’s just more time in,” Barry said. “Of course I’ve been training wrestling and jiu-jitsu for three, almost four years. But I’ve only done it live in fights in the UFC. My first live experience with jiu-jitsu was a UFC pay-per-view show. Unfortunately, I keep getting taken down, but at the same time it’s good because the more times I get taken down, the more comfortable I’m becoming on the ground.

“I’m getting better at being able to identify what’s in danger and what’s not so bad – the difference between what I need to tap to and what is just going to be uncomfortable for a little while.”

Still, though, the critics came out in full force.

“Did I shut a lot of people up? Yes,” he said. “But did the roaches come out to play? Absolutely. Ever since the fight, you know what I’ve been seeing about my improved ground game? Nothing. And this is the most ridiculous thing of all time, but people are now writing del Rosario’s not that good on the ground. That’s haters, roaches, whatever you want to call them – instead of high-fiving the guy that does well, you give a lot of attention to the guy who did terrible. I’ve gotten a lot of praise, but then there’s the other extreme. That’s just people typing to be typing – zero thought process.”

But if he had his druthers, it’s pretty obvious where he’d like to keep future fights, and how he’d like to finish them – the same way he finished del Rosario.

This, despite a long-running threat that he wasn’t going to cut his hair until he submitted someone in the UFC – a threat his teammates brought to an end after 13 months by holding him down to shave his head before the del Rosario fight.

“If I get a ‘Fight of the Night’ (bonus), that means I’ve done something wrong,” Barry said. “I come to finish fights. I’m not here to go the distance. That’s never the intention. I’m coming to finish somebody. If I get a knockout, it generally is going to be rough.”

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